


A Tortured Academic

by telm_393



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Character Study, Flash Fic, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 08:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13004085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: The reality: in life, Chidi lied constantly.Or did he?





	A Tortured Academic

There actually was one lie that Chidi could consistently tell.

He didn’t always think about it, but when he did, when it suddenly hit him, this wrong thing he did without even considering it, he always quietly spiraled, usually late at night when he was going over every single moment of the day that he could remember, picking apart and piecing together the right and wrong. And in response to the (common, reoccurring) revelation of his evil, he wracked his brain to figure out a reason why he could lie when it came to that question and those like it even though lying was fundamentally bad.

Well, it’s not like anyone wanted to know the truth. It’s not like anyone needed to.

And, again–Chidi couldn’t stress this enough–no one wanted to.

Not even Chidi.

Anyway, most people lied, didn’t they? In response to that question or those like it. Or were they really so much more honest than Chidi? That much more _capable_ of being honest than Chidi in that one particular situation? (Because that didn’t seem fair. Then again, what was fair anyway?)

Chidi was brilliant. He knew it, and so did everyone else, and that was actually related to the issue, to why he couldn’t tell the truth (he was _selfish_ ).

Because Chidi’s brilliant brain was also a cage, or maybe a torture chamber, and everyone else only caught glimpses of that truth, and when they did they didn’t ask about it, or, rather, they did (that was the problem), but didn’t want to know the answer, and Chidi's brilliance was why, somewhere inside, he really didn't want it to be. That was reality.

Part of Chidi’s job was to parse reality. To search for meaning and what should be done, what was the right thing to do. How to be good.

The weight of it, of knowledge and the search for knowledge and all the different things that could be the truth if you just looked at it this way or that, was crushing. All the little details making up the big picture, making up life—he just couldn’t move past them.

His mind would wander and then it would get trapped on something big or small, or it would break something big down into its smallest parts. There was always something wrong. Something Chidi had to make right. Something he couldn’t make right.

Chidi couldn’t say that, though. He couldn’t answer that question truthfully, because what if he was met by disgust? Indifference? Pity?

What if someone wanted to help?

Because they couldn’t, and the truth, the reality, was that Chidi didn’t need it anyway, and, actually, it wasn't so much selfishness, in the end. His mind had too much value as it was to try to change it, it would be wrong to try to do so for something as trivial as quality of life.

He was smart, he was good at his job, he was functional, and he wouldn’t be nearly as brilliant as he was without his torture chamber of a mind, because it was the rumination and the meticulous mental organization and the moments of clarity when his mind finally stopped on a detail that bloomed into a bigger, better idea that gave him his brightest moments.

Sometimes the torture stopped and there was clarity instead, and when it came, he got tenure. He got published. He had value.

He could lie a little to keep that.

He could smile when someone asked _that question_ or one like it, no matter the situation, and he could respond how he wanted to, how everyone wanted him to.

_How are you?_

“I’m well. I’m good. I’m great. I’m fine. I’m okay.”

Wasn’t he, in the end?

Chidi was a great, passionate teacher; in front of the blackboard was the one place where there was always clarity. He was successful in his chosen field. He was a respected academic.

So on those nights when he actually admitted that today he had lied—because he really hadn’t been fine, he hadn’t been well, he hadn’t been okay, but he had said he was anyway, even with his breath caught in his throat or humiliation pounding in his ears or his heart beating rabbit quick and his stomach churning and he hadn’t been able to eat today—he would still, after much deliberation, reach the same conclusion: he had only lied in the moment, and that was going to have to be alright if he was ever going to get to sleep.

Because he was, in the end, well and fine and okay.

Clearly he could find the big picture sometimes, and it showed him that, in the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t a liar after all.

(The devil’s in the details.)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at serendipitouscontaminant.tumblr.com. :D Come talk! I'm friendly and post meta and it's currently 99% The Good Place.


End file.
